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Recent history on long road trips does not bode well for Blue Jays: Griffin

First-place Jays are preparing to leave on an important 10-game, three-city road swing to Baltimore, New York and Cincinnati.

The Blue Jays are set to embark on a three-city, 10-game road trip and recent history on such journeys has not been kind to the club. But manager John Gibbons says his team is focused on the task at hand and isn't worried about them thinking too far ahead. (Steve Russell / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

The first-place Blue Jays are preparing to leave on an important 10-game, three-city road swing to Baltimore, New York and Cincinnati.

And, for the doubters, this might seem to be the most telling stretch of the season in terms of where this team stacks up as a contender.

The first two stops are against division foes, the Baltimore Orioles and New York Yankees, two teams that are most closely challenging the Jays’ first-place standing. Then it is an inter-league series against the Cincinnati Reds, a playoff team from a year ago and always tough.

The Jays need to do well on this trip. Recall back in May of 2009, the then-first-place Jays had a 3 1/2-game lead in the division under manager Cito Gaston and embarked on a crucial nine-game trip to Boston, Atlanta and Baltimore. They went 0-for-the-road trip and returned home in third place.

Over those nine games, the Jays were outscored 53-23, with losses taken by an underwhelming list of Toronto pitchers. Brian Tallet dropped two of those decisions, with single losses to Brett Cecil, Robert Ray, Jesse Carlson, Casey Janssen, Shawn Camp, Ricky Romero and Brian Wolfe.

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The Jays never recovered. In fact, in their three road trips overall of nine-plus games that season, they were a combined 5-23. They finished the season with a record of 75-87 — 28 games behind.

Those long road trips did them in.

So how do the Jays avoid the pitfalls of this three-city road trip?

Since, and including that 0-9 reverse-clean-sweep trip in ’09 — which was the last time the Jays were in first place this late in a season — they have had 17 trips of nine-plus games. They are 3-10-4 in those 17 away series with a combined record of 63 wins and 101 losses, a .384 winning percentage.

Can they handle it? This is a team that does not have many position players with experience in pennant races. Dioner Navarro with the Rays, Melky Cabrera with the Yankees, Braves and Giants, and perhaps a couple of others in races that did not last. So how does this team avoid over-thinking, of placing “most important status” on every little thing that happens with 96 games remaining and sitting on the biggest division lead since the 2009 season?

“When we get there, it will be Baltimore, it won’t be New York, it won’t be Cincy,” bench coach Demarlo Hale sagely said. “Then when we get to New York, Baltimore’s behind us. It’s New York. It’s pretty simple, because you can go too far ahead of yourself. You don’t start scoreboard watching till September. It’s easy to say, but there’s a cliche that you take it a day at a time. I don’t think you can look too far ahead. It’s today . . . this team has been good at bouncing back and playing today.”

It can wind you up pretty tight if a player without pennant-race experience, for four months nursing a division lead, places too much teeth-grinding importance on every win and every loss. You have to avoid defeats lingering, stop them from starting to snowball down a steep, slippery slope to .500 and below. It happened in 2009, although how Gaston had that team in first place with a rotation that allowed Tallet and Scott Richmond to start a combined 49 times is amazing.

“I don’t know if they ever get that attitude,” Jays manager John Gibbons said of his current 25 men and the possibility of them perhaps placing too much importance on a road trip in June.

“It’s still so early in the season. You’re going to get your ups and downs regardless, no matter how good you are. I don’t sense it. It’s pretty much a carefree group. It’s a loose group. Even through last year, even when we were struggling, it’s just kind of the personality. I don’t sense that those guys will do any of that. Who knows, but I don’t see any tightening up of guys, like ‘I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that.’ But time will tell. It’s too early to say that right now.”

One factor that has turned this team around has been the return to health of closer Janssen. It has allowed the other relievers to return to more familiar innings, with positive results. Through the years, it is evident members of the bullpen have a lot of time during games to discuss things and arrive at fairly intelligent conclusions. Janssen checked in with his thoughts.

“This is where we thought we were going to be,” Janssen said. “We thought we were going to be there last year, but we understand we’ve got just under a hundred games left. It’s a long way to go. There’s no series that means the most. Every game matters. Just play it that way.”

The last time the Jays had a winning record returning from a 10-game, three-city road trip was a 7-3 mark on May 3-12, 2010, when they went to Cleveland, Chicago against the White Sox and Boston.

Gibbons was asked if this becomes the most important road trip of the season for his Blue Jays.

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